Are you still thinking about your bounce rate and how to increase it?
A few weeks ago, I posted an article explaining why I think bounce rate is a poor metric for most sites. This indicator is determined by simply looking at how many visitors came by and how many continued on to other pages on your site versus those who didn’t. The end result is a percentage of visitors who left your site, or in other words, bounced.
The bounce rate formula, if you really want to know, is pretty straightforward:
Bounce rate = visitor who left after a single page / sum of visits
Obviously, the lower bounce rate, the better. That is, if you even care about bounce rates. Again, I, for one, do not. But if you’re one of the few who can actually use bounce rate to measure performance, the following is what dictates someone who left:
- She closed her browser window
- She closed her browser tab
- She entered a new URL in the browser
- She used the browser search bar and displayed results “over” your site’s content
- She went ‘Back’ either using the back button on the browser or shortcut key (usually Alt + Left Arrow)
- She clicked on an external link from your site (e.g. ad, blogroll, commentluv, etc)
It doesn’t matter if she did any of these things in the first few seconds or after a few hours. A bounce is a bounce!